Background

Most often, the /h/ sound in the initial position is made by the consonant h as represented in words such as hat and happy. H sometimes appears in the medial position in words such as ahead, ahoy, and behave. The use of the consonant h is very consistent because it makes only this one sound. However, when h is preceded by w, such as in what or when, the /h/ sound is made before /w/. The sound of the digraph wh is represented by /hw/. It should be noted that in many English dialects, the h is silent in the wh digraph. This means that the initial sound in what is pronounced no differently than the initial sound in wit or wet.